NEWSLETTER
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Lonzo Ball will not run out of the tunnel on Thursday night. The Chicago Bulls guard has been ruled out for the team’s battle with the San Antonio Spurs. But that might as well be viewed as a good thing.
As the team made known before the tip-off of the 2024-25 campaign, Ball will not participate in back-to-backs as a precaution. The Bulls are scheduled to play Friday night at the United Center. All indications are that Ball should return to the rotation for that meeting with the Pacers. And the fact that he’s even in a position to do that this season is a borderline miracle.
Ball went over two full years without appearing in an NBA game. He went down with a knee injury in January of 2022, which the Bulls deemed as a partially torn meniscus and ruled him out for six to eight weeks. Even with some prior injury troubles, nobody expected the tragic domino effect that unfolded from there. Ball would go under the knife two more times in hopes of getting his career back on track. And the third procedure ended up being one that no NBA player in history had returned from.
You Have to Read ESPN’s Latest on Lonzo Ball’s Return
Look, we all knew that Lonzo Ball’s journey was emotionally taxing and physically stressful. We all knew that a return to the court was never a full guarantee. However, nothing has put the complex nature of his recovery into perspective like the latest ESPN feature from Ramona Shelbourne and Jamal Collier.
I can’t encourage you enough to read their latest piece on Lonzo Ball’s lengthy journey. They talk to the man himself – as well as his doctor and trainers – about exactly what went wrong and how risky the final surgery proved to be. Indeed, I’m not sure it’s been highlighted enough how much of a “hail mary” Ball’s cartilage transplant surgery was. The decision to do that had as much to do with potentially saving Ball’s career as it did getting his everyday life back on track.
Anyway, I don’t even want to share any snippets of the actual article here. My only intention is to encourage you to read the entirety of the piece on ESPN here. It’s incredibly well done and very emotional.
